to think that doctors shouldn't go on strike over pension changes

[starwarrior]

Why shouldn't they just suck it up like the rest of us?

BartletForAmerica

Not sure what the problem is there with parity across the public sector.

Why should everyone in the public sector get the same pension and conditions? Are you doing the same job?

The report is here:

^www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/pensions-report/^

From that:

Government projections suggest that the 2007-08 changes are likely to reduce costs to taxpayers of the pension schemes by £67 billion over 50 years, with costs stabilising at around 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 2% of public expenditure.

That quote makes it clear that public sector pensions are in deficit and will remain in deficit for half a century. The word we ought to be seeing in any pensions report is 'self-financing'.

You seem keen on fairness. Is it 'fair' that I should subsidise your pension when I can't afford to save for my own retirement?

What is the current retirement age for doctors in the NHS?
Why do all the ones I know (about half a dozen - I don't have time to add them up) work a 4 day week maximum, send their kids to private schools and have at least one second home and pay for their kids to go to university so that they don't have to take out a student loan?

We have 4 children. None privately educated, no way could we afford that. Of the Dr's I know who are privately educating, all are double professional income families, probably a fairly typical situation that you would find in other higher paid careers outside medicine. We have no second home. I only know one Dr with a holiday home.

As for university - yes, our eldest is at Uni, and the second starts in Sept, we are paying hand over fist (to the extent that we are currently having to re-mortgage our house to keep DS1 and 2 at Uni). We are not paying this because we don't want to take them to take out student loans, we are paying/will be paying (£500+ per month to EACH CHILD) because we are legally obliged to pay - they are not entailed to the usual living cost loan (each gets £900 per year only). Many higher rate tax payers unexpectedly find themselves in that situation - I had no Idea my DS's couldn't borrow the normal student loan until we applied for it!

DS1's course is 6 years, DS2 is 5 years (each course potentially has an extra year on top of that), and for at least 2 years, we will be paying for 3 DS at Uni (£1500+ per month). We are going to be running up serious debt to pay their Accommodation costs. As I said- we are not doing this to avoid the kids taking out big student loans, they simply are not entitled to any living cost loan above a very small one of £900year :(

Sorry, I haven't read the thread. Doctors are fab and hardworking and caring etc BUT their pensions are over inflated and much larger than was ever intended. A friend of mine is just retiring as a psychiatrist at 55 (normal retirement age for psychiatrists) and will get a pension of 70k for the rest of his life. I have looked up annuity rates (very low) and the cash lump sum needed to provide that is about £3.5 million. Now, even if he had paid in 30% of his salary for years, he would not have paid in anything like £3.5 million. Hard as he has worked, much as I love him, I do not think it right that our children will be working just as hard, earning 20k or so, and paying through their taxes for him to live at a much higher standard of living than them for the next 30 - 40 years doing nothing when he could easily work for another 10 years. Doctors of our children's generation will never get that kind of pension as it is NOT affordable for the country long term. This is one generation (the existing fifty something doctors) robbing the next generation.

YANBU doctors should count themselves lucky not having their pensions drastically reduced as they would be had they been anywhere near self financing. I would love to get a lump sum of just under £4 million on my 55th birthday but would feel bad taking it from the state (ie all taxpayers, most of whom would be poorer than I am). We are all in this together and those of us in the private sector are finding that our pension savings will buy us VERY little in the way of annual pensions....much less than we ever planned for due to low interest rates. It was never intended to provide retiring doctors with MILLIONS of pounds. But that is how it is currently working out and something needs to be done.

Interesting analysis here of the life expectancy of doctors.

A psychiatrist (to use the example in the previous post) has an average life expectancy of 73.3 with a standard deviation of +/- 14.3 years.

FWIW, I do think the government is being disingenuous in targeting doctors when their pension fund is in surplus. As someone said earlier, a fairer approach would be to tax more - but that would mean taxing all high earners and you couldn't possibly do that .

My Uncle was a GP and would never ever have gone on strike. He was totally dedicated to his patients. His pay was proportionally a lot lower than it is today. (I remembering him saving for years to have a new roof on his house).
Our friend is a GP earning well over £100,000 a year and he works 3 1/2 days a week because as he says, he doesn't need that much money (he is single). All the GP's at his practice work P/T and were laughing at the previous government when they gave them a huge wage rise and took nights and overtime off them. They couldn't believe their luck!
I agree that everyone has the right to strike but I thought most GP's would want to put their patients first, you have to be very dedicated to take the job on in the first place.
I know many will disagree with me, but that's just my opinion

I feel really divided on this.

On the one hand, I have to say doctors moaning about the long hours they do annoys me. I'm an academic.

*8+ years at university? - check!

*80-90 hour weeks during term? - standard!

*working 7 days weeks? - normal!

*not having guaranteed employment? - tick! In fact, in my area fewer than half of people who graduate with a PhD will gain a permanent contract

*having to move halfway across the country? - yep! Uprooted DP and everything and hauled 350 miles away for first job. Many academics 'commute' across the country to sustain their marriages.

*lots of peers leaving the UK to work abroad? - again, loads of my peer group have taken much better jobs in Canada and the US.

So sometimes, when I see doctors writing things like 'I work 90 hour weeks', I have to admit I do think ffs, suck it up - because you know, it's a competitive profession and these days, that's what a competitive profession demands.

However. With something like the pensions - drs were, as I understand, given a deal which is now being reneged on. Academics' T&C have been shat all over, but that's no reason why others shouldn't fight. I'd support doctors fighting for their pension rights for that reason.

I have to say I am not sympathetic to the cause. GPs are technically self-employed, so can sell a practice and so on (as I understand it), but have all the benefits of being public sector employees in terms of pensions and maternity leave, etc. I think they rather want to have their cake and eat it.

It's a bit different though, RevoltingPeasant. If your work a 90-hour week and exhaust yourself, maybe you'll make a few typos in a paper you're writing or a student will get a dodgy mark or something.

When doctors are exhausted, people die.

As a society we need our doctors to be on top of their game.

And your job sounds frigging awful. Maybe you should go on strike.

The retiral age for psychiatrists is 55 for people who entered psychiatry before 1994. After that time there is no preferential retiral age. That is itself will be interesting, because it means that from when 2024 onwards there will be a period of around 10 years with a hugely reduced retiral rate (beause the people who could go at 55 have gone, and the others have to wait to get old enough to retire at the usual age). That could be a problem for anyone looking for a career post in psychiatry over that time.

Freerange - yes, totally! Which is why I am happy earning about 1/3 of what my consultant earns.

Although - if I may big myself up - I think students doing final dissertations etc would be pretty hacked off at 'just a dodgy mark'.

But point taken.

And we did go on strike just the same, a few months back - except no one really noticed because we all worked from home

hive yes it is a massive problem in academia too - now that the retirement ceiling has been raised, the jobs market is even more competitive because older people are staying on, not retiring and opening up jobs.

It's so competitive now that just to make a shortlist in my field, not only do you have to have a PhD, you also have to have published a book + 4-5 papers in peer-reviewed journals - that's just to be seriously considered for an entry-level position.

I guess the point is, this is a wider problem for public sector professionals and drs are doing what they can to secure their rights - fine - doing them down won't make my life better. Good on them.

Boffinmum - I dont think that GP's do get the same benefits as other NHS staff, I think that for maternity leave the partnership bears a large brunt of the locum costs.

RevoltingPeasant

I think that you are right. And that the government would quite like a bit of divide and conquer and see different professions get so occupied arguing with each other that we miss what the government is doing to the NHS.

Its obvious that the NHS cant continue as it is, there just isnt the money for constantly increasing funding, but I dont think that the David Cameron approach of chopping the NHS into little bits and giving it to his mates is the one we should be taking.

hive - absolutely - the government is so good at that type of spin!

Like, with us, the whole 'now universities are charging 9 grand but academics still expect decent pensions yada yada' - conveniently ignoring that we are 'charging' () that because the govt cut our funding from other sources, so we still have the same amount of money!

Yes, people need to pull together more. We are all in it together. Doctors save lives; teachers and nurses are necessary; university academics do all the initial training for doctors and teachers - it's not a competition between professions!

I support the doctors and I am not one myself. Govt evil once more

It's a closed shop - very rarely does a doctor get the boot, complain abut one doing a shit job and it will get you nowhere because they all refsue to talk. They don't have my sympathy - the GPs anyway, I think they do a fairly ordinary job, they screw up frequently. There is not one GP I trust the opinion of. So as far as I'm concerned they are over-paid. Teachers on the other hand are underpaid - they have lives in their hands too....

Haven't had time just now to read the whole thread, but I am a GP, and I voted 'no' to the BMA strike. I feel privileged to do an intellectually and emotionally satisfying job, where patients trust me and for which I feel fairly remunerated. It is not always an easy job, but I don't think any job is. I will not be striking on the 21st. I fear that we are shooting ourselves in the foot over this. We are all living longer and need to pay more for our pensions just like everyone else.

It's not a strike ffs. Can you actually read?

It is the MPs, bankers and tax dodgers who should be sucking it up, no-one else.

I find it very hard to feel sorry for any person earning over 100k a year (and I personally have 3 friends who are all GP's and earn at LEAST this much) who has to pay extra into their pension. ESP when the nurses they work with often earn too little to survive adequately and work just as bloody hard if not harder.

Amd isn't their pension still final salary? It was being discussed on radio 4 the other day and they'll still get at least 68k a year pension...I can see how they'd struggle on that

I don't think they are any more deserving of sympathy than fat cat big businessmen tbh, they've had it far too good for far too long, and the argument about our health being in their hands and so it being important that they are happy is tosh, as it applies to the nurses and support staff in the hospitals and also to every person doing ANY of that could effect the lives and safelty of us on our daily travels. Op you ARE BU though in saying they shouldn't strike, that is their right. But personally I think they are bloody lucky and should stop winging when their lot is so much better than most people's!

For Fucks sake people!!!!!

Who cares if it is doctors, nurses, cleaners, or even ice cream men who are the issue.?Or how much they are paid?

People are pissed off because they signed on for one thing.
Then the government changed it and took money away that was promised.
Then they took more money away in other areas of the work and changed who aspects of the training and what the work is to be done.
NOW they are changing it all AGAIN.

All of you moaning that things are terrible in the private sector, or how hard you work etc. How would you feel if this happened to you????? Pretty bloody pissed off I reckon!? Wouldn't you want to do something about it?

For those saying " Well I had to lump it, why don't they?" - WHY WHY WHY did you have to lump it??? Why didn't you fight? Why didn't you strike? Or make a stand?

For those saying how lovely the gold plated pensions are - Come on then. Work in the public sector. Train for 5years + at a cost of £50K in student LOANS as doctor to be hated at every opportunity by the daily wail. Or spend your friday nights dealing with drunk, drugged up lunatics a police officer. You come and wipe a poor old lady's shitty bum as a HCA and nurse. You deal with 30 snotty, know it all 15 year olds and try and get them to actually learn something. You collect rubbish all day long in back breaking work, all weathers as a Bin man. You work as a civil servant (who lets face it - everyone loves to hate) running a country and dealing with all the farcical changes each new government dictates as policy.

None of the people who are affected by this caused the financial crisis. Yet why are they having to pay to fix the governments mistakes?

DH has just had a phone call from a friend who is a doctor. Shes very upset by the strike and thinks its a bad idea, not only because she doesn't think she the pension changes are unacceptable, but also because she thinks it will damage the profession. She thinks its unreasonable to strike when she paid the amount she is, under the circumstances. She thinks that ultimately damaging relations with the public on this one will make her job even harder and its not worth that.

She's still a junior, so this will hurt her more than most.

Yabu, what MammaBrussels says. I'm bored now

We all have a right to strike over our terms and conditions. I have been a doctors wife for 20 years. My husbands contribution to the health of our community has had a massive effect on our family life. You never know when he will get home ,over the years he has had to miss countless family events;the birth of our first child,been on call in another hospital whilst I'm standing in intensive care with a dying child and my 18 month old in my arms because we had no family close by to look after him whilst I was at the hospital. The 90 hour weeks he did in the early days when he was being payed less than the porters,the long telephone conversations in the night regarding seriously ill patients, The huge amount of stress at what he sees and deals with on a daily basis, the physical and verbal abuse, I can go on and on.... oh and for any body who says that he doesnt pay for his pension do you realise for every pound he earns over a certain treshhold he has to pay 40p in tax. He will have earned his pension

@Sophe29

You say "People are pissed off because they signed on for one thing.
Then the government changed it and took money away that was promised"

Is that really true ? I think any benefits earned so far are kept. If an employer wants (or needs) to change the terms of a contract then I have absolutely no problem with that. Give them the correct notice period, and then they have the chance to accept it, or if it means the new remuneration is not goodenough they have the chance to go and find a different job. When people are working 40+ years, I don't see how they can expect that a contract made on day 1 won't change ! No-one complained when it was changed (for the better) under Labour.

My DH (private sector) was put in the same position. He walked from his employer as the changes meant he could do better elsewhere. Now self-employed and making his own pension provisions.